The technology relates to a driving assistant for vehicles that may assist an own vehicle with a lane change between adjacent lanes.
In recent years, various assistants for vehicles such as automobiles have been developed and put into practical use. Such an assistant may be installed with a camera or a radar system and may recognize travelling environment around a vehicle, to lessen an operation burden of a driver. Such assistants may provide various functions of travelling assistance, one of which may be a function of assisting an own vehicle in making a lane change safely.
For instance, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2009-294943 discloses a technique that aims at assisting with a safe lane change. This technique involves: determining a travelling state of a vehicle on a target lane that an own vehicle is going to enter; determining presence or absence of a vehicle that is going to enter the target lane from outside a lane on which the own vehicle is travelling; and setting guide information based on the vehicle on the target lane and the vehicle outside the target lane.